


Three Drops

by paladinpalindrome



Category: The Almighty Johnsons
Genre: Attempted Murder, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-25
Updated: 2013-02-25
Packaged: 2017-12-03 14:01:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/699031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paladinpalindrome/pseuds/paladinpalindrome
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three drops broke the Johnson boys, and though Ty and Axl don't know it, after that day things were never the same.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Three Drops

Three drops. 

Three drops doesn't often do a lot. Three drops of rain, three drops of liquor … though three drops of the right perfume will do wonders on a woman's skin. 

Drip, drop, drip. 

Ty and Axl don't know the roots of their old feud, though they see it blossoming around them everyday, morphing into a more muted background noise now that fate has pushed them all to work together in light of the Odin-problem. They chalk it up to personality differences, ways of life … the fact that Anders can be a twat and Mike can never relax the reigns, not for a second. Ty, at least, knows about Anders and Val, though Mike was so drunk he doesn't remember letting it slip to his little brother. Axl doesn't remember specifics about their clashes after their mother left, too traumatized and confused by her absence to notice what words his older brothers would throw at each other when they fought. And afterwards, he chalked it up to god business; Anders never knowing why Mike fucked off after turning twenty-one until he hit the milestone himself, becoming something new and powerful enough to feel invincible without their family. 

The truth isn't even god business, not really, and it's much smaller than all the bad blood that's wrapped up in their little family. 

Drip, drop, drip. 

Anders is seventeen, and walking home, about two weeks before their mum fucks off to become a tree, not that he'll know that part until a few years after. He's on his way back from the corner store, where his mum sent him off to the second he set foot in the door after school. He'd windged, asked her to send Mike instead.

"Oh, he's not here, darling, left an hour ago."

"Well, where is he?"

"Oh how should I know? He's always off on his own these days."

They'd never really been close, Mike and Anders. In their childhood, yes, but once they grew older, there'd been this odd friction, more than the usual tension between brothers, and it had started when Mike's mood swings had. The younger boys don't remember it, but Anders does. Mike had been the first to snap, to declare war, to sever their ties enough that Anders had never wanted it back. Once they grow up he would stay around enough to poke, to prod, and push, as he did best, and wonder how far he'd have to go to get Mike to drop the act and hit back, with all the volatility and cruelty of his younger days. 

He wonders if Ty and Axl remember Mum's little tableau that day, so fucking Norman Rockwell in the end. The boys gathered round the table, each with a quartered peanut butter and jelly sandwich, the crusts on Axl's cut off just the way they all knew he liked it. She was just setting two empty mugs out from the cupboard when he walks in the door with the bags. 

He thinks, absent-mindedly, that she looks surprised to see him.

"Anders!" She says, "Thank you, dear, put those down, I'll put them away."

"K, mum," he mutters, dropping the bags on the counter, nudging Ty and ruffling Axl's hair as he bounces by to their mother's side as she pours their milk. 

"I want to! I want to!" 

"Hold on, Axl. Anders, aren't you hungry darling?"

"Nah, I'm good," he says, heading back to his room.

"Are you sure?" She calls after him, sounding oddly-urgent.

"Yes mum I'm fine!"

Anders heads to his bed, his discarded school books lying about, debating finishing his work so he can party the weekend away, or fucking off now in favor of chatting up the leggy girl in his history class. He's searching for her number, knowing he'd tucked it in his wallet, before remembering he'd left it with the bags on the kitchen counter. 

He heads down the hallway again, stopping to throw his towel from that morning in the laundry. He can hear Ty laughing from the kitchen, always their mum's favorite, and Axl crying again, "Let me! Let me do it!"

"Alright sweetheart," he hears his mother say, "Three drops in each now, alright?"

"Three drops, three drops, three drops," Axl's chant carries through the house. 

"Anders!" His mum says again as he walks back in, in that weird startled way that's starting to make him decidedly uncomfortable. "Thought you were studying?"

"Nah, I don't have anything till after the weekend," he lies, looking for the root of his unease, but there's nothing wrong with what he can see. Ty is laughing at Axl's faces, his mother is tucking a bottle into her purse, and on the table are two sandwiches and two mugs of milk. 

"Well, I'm off then, important errand, don't let the boys bother you alright?"

"Mhhm." He hums noncommittally, tilting his head when she kisses his cheek on the way out the door, wondering where the hell Mike is this time and whether he'll come back completely pissed again. 

He heads to the fridge to get a soda. Behind him Axl takes one bite of his sandwich and tears up the rest, building what he insists are castles with it as he always does, and Ty gulps his milk down and starts nibbling on his food. 

Anders is just snapping open his cola when Ty starts choking. 

It's not even that violent, so he doesn't pay it any attention until the sound doesn't stop, and Ty starts wheezing. 

He turns. Ty is red, bright red, grasping his throat and breathing like a dying man. 

Anders is next to him in a second, shaking him, and Axl's giggles at his brother's face slide into sobs as he steps up and away from his brothers, not understanding what is happening. 

"Ty!" Anders is screaming, "TY!" 

His brother falls over in his arms onto their kitchen floor, and Anders is yelling at Axl to call an ambulance, praying that he knows how to do just that. 

Except Ty isn't breathing, isn't moving at all, and his red cheeks have gone pale, his lips are tinged with blue, and Anders is having a harder and harder time seeing him behind a sheen of panicked tears. 

He remembers they have ipecac, and tears through the cabinets searching for it, ripping off the child-lock and sliding into place besides Ty again. He doesn't even read the instructions, just pours some down his brother's throat along with a litany of prayers and curses and _please please no no no Ty please_. 

Axl is sobbing and tugging his arm relentlessly, and Anders turns Ty towards the floor and pounds his back, praying for anything to happen. It's far too quiet, and he can hear his own heartbeat pounding and the distinct lack of Ty breathing and he's rubbing his throat and pushing and trying not to scream and _where the fuck is Mike?_

He has no concept of time, no idea of how long the three of them sit there until Ty chokes again and throws up, milky white fluid all over the place, spattering on the floor. 

"Fuck, Ty, that's it, _fuck_." He has no idea what he's even saying anymore, just empty words running out of his mouth as Ty, paler than he's ever seen, throws up his milk, and his ears are ringing louder and louder and he suddenly realizes it's the sirens. 

Hours later, and he's still shaking, in a hospital chair with Axl half in his lap, holding Ty's hand as he sleeps, the other cradling his silent mobile phone. No one had picked up when he called from the ambulance, so he had pulled his fake ID out of his wallet and smiled, miraculously charming the nurse into believing that he was the boys' legal guardian. 

_Poison_ , he remembers the doctor's words, _there was some kind of animal poison in his system. Don't you keep your cabinets locked up, son?_

Six little letters and they're tattooed across his irises. _Poison. Poison_. He doesn't quiet understand, doesn't want to, and he calls Mike one more time before giving up on him completely. 

They come home that night to an empty house, no mother, no Mike, and Anders gets both the boys in bed before returning to the mess in the kitchen. 

Axl's creation is still there, the remnants of his half-eaten sandwich, and his mug of milk is full next to Ty's plate with a corner of the sandwich gone, and a half-drunk mug of milk. 

Something cold hits Anders, a pointed and devastating leech blossoming in his skull, and he suddenly wants to tear someone's eyes out. He settles for glass instead, picking up the mugs and dashing them into the sink.  
 _  
I want to! I want to!_

_Three drops, alright sweetheart?_  
  
Three drops and a bottle tucked into his mother's purse. 

He crumbles next to the counter, pressing back sobs into his mouth with bleeding hands, ignoring the chips of glass that caught on the edges of his fingers, and he cries like he hasn't cried in years, staring at the ipecac and milk on the floor, the sugary echoes of his mother's voice ringing in his ears. 

The next day he tells Ty that he had a reaction to the sandwich, and the boy never touched peanut butter again. 

He tells Mike the truth about it when he finally shows up, three days later, three days with almost no sleep watching his little brothers every second that he can, thankful that their mum isn't home as he can't figure out how the hell to ask her _did you fucking poison your sons, mum?_ He almost calls to says something, once, but the words stick in his throat and his eyes burn as he remembers her voice saying, _aren't you hungry, darling_ , so insistently. 

Mike doesn't listen, doesn't believe him at all, says lots of kids are allergic to lots of weird things, making excuses again as he always did, for their Dad, for their parents' fights, for every bruise that appeared on their mother or himself or Anders or Ty. He tries pleading, again, the terror that's been creeping into him for the past three days flooding through him and stuttering in his chest, because this is their _mother_ and she'd just tried to kill her kids and _Mike, fucking listen to me!_

But Mike doesn't. Mike and his mood-swings that are getting worse and worse, and the fucking dice he's always twitching around in his fingers these days. Mike shoves him aside and heads out the door, says Anders is imagining things and he has to go down to the bar, he's feeling lucky tonight. 

And years later when he finds out the truth, about Mike, about their parents, about everything, it doesn't heal or gives perspective, it just makes him more and more bitter, and he resolves never to ask Mike for anything ever again. 

And he always drinks from clear glasses, now, everything is open and obvious and laid out for the eye to see, and he gives the boys' keys to his flat, _in case I'm pissed_ , he says, but it's for them, for if any part of their subconscious rears up and needs to find themselves there, in a place where you can see anyone and everyone's intentions, and he never sugarcoats anything again, spits out words that are sharp and crass but at least they're honest. 

It was three little drops that broke the Johnson boys, and for all the days that Mike was there, every time after, Anders remembers Ty's face, blue and pale and horribly mortal, and can never bring himself to forgive his older brother for the time he wasn't there for.  
 _  
And in case he ever forgets, he sees Ty's face now, pale and immortal, and reflecting the blue off his ice chamber, and he always cites the cold as an excuse to leave the room._


End file.
